38

Much later that evening, Lauren excused herself to Reese and Watson, slipping down into the basement with the intention of typing up some notes from an old private investigation she had taken on.

She had done it as a favor to a distant cousin on her mom’s side. He had suspected his wife had been cheating on him. And she was. The cousin, Alan, wasn’t ready to divorce her—not just yet—he wanted to have all his finances in order, and the photographs Lauren had given him had proved his suspicions beyond a doubt. Cousin Alan’s net worth consisted chiefly of an ironworker’s pension and a beloved, rundown hunting cabin, but he was determined to keep them both.

Getting attacked had sidetracked Lauren’s follow-up and right then seemed as good a time as any to catch up. The daily emails she had been receiving from Alan needed to stop. She could sit upstairs and stew over her meeting with Mark or over her impending covert mission with Reese, or she could sit at her computer and make a few hundred bucks finishing the PI job.

The problem was the distractions she allowed herself.

Even though it was fairly new, and she had sprung for a ton of memory and upgrades, her computer still took a good minute or two to fully come online. Her daughters were constantly telling her to just leave the machine on, but Lauren was convinced that would be a fire risk. From her chair at her desk she could hear the scratching of Watson’s claws on her hardwood floor upstairs. She imagined all the little grooves being etched into the wood and thought absently, I have to find a groomer to take care of that.

Reese kept saying he was going to get around to having Watson’s hair cut and nails trimmed, but as a mom, Lauren knew that even though Reese fed and walked him, he thought all the little extras of caring for a dog took care of themselves. As if the magic doggie shampoo fairy came in the middle of the night and washed muddy white dogs.

Watson appeared at the top of the stairs, tail wagging, and launched himself toward her. She managed to keep him from climbing on her lap by giving him an old green slipper she now kept within arm’s reach for just such occasions. He accepted it happily, lying down to gnaw on it.

Watson wasn’t the only distraction, though. They were all around her. A picture of her with her daughters ten years ago, the marble ashtray Mark had bought her when she still smoked that now held paper clips, and Frank Violanti’s cell number scribbled on a blue Post-it, stuck to the small white board on the wall behind her computer. All of them fought for her attention.

She eyed the Post-it, plucked it up, and crumpled it in her fist. A direct connection to David Spencer had managed to invade her thoughts again.

The past year had been one of deep self-reflection for Lauren. She had questioned her motives for taking on the Spencer case and for wanting to believe in an eighteen-year-old psychopath, for falling back in bed with her ex-husband, and for allowing Joe Wheeler’s abuse again and waiting until it was almost too late before she had done anything about it. Although she asked the hard questions, she didn’t necessarily like the answers she’d found.

Her usual remedy for confronting bad decisions was withdrawal and immersion in her work, which is exactly what she’d done in regard to Mark. After the trial she broke off all contact with him, even after he sent a copy of his divorce decree to her office. Their affair had shattered her heart all over again, especially because she had finally accepted the fact that they would never end up living happily ever after. Love wasn’t the problem; it was trust. Seeing him earlier that day had brought all those feelings of loss and hurt back to the surface. She knew she had to stay strong and resist the urge to give in to the hope that somehow their relationship would finally work out. It wouldn’t. Ever. It was past time for her to move on.

Which brought her around to David Spencer. Dealing with him was more problematic for Lauren. David was a different kind of animal. Immersion in work just brought him more into focus for her, since he was work.

Over the summer Lauren had attended a homicide seminar the county had sponsored at the Charlotte, a swanky downtown hotel. The main topic was recognizing and identifying different personality subtypes in murderers through crime scene assessment. For four days Lauren sat silently, scribbling notes in her notebook, writing down every word the instructors said. Especially the first lecturer. Every part of his presentation made sense to her. Every point resonated in her brain, connecting David’s behaviors to the crimes she knew he had committed.

A line uttered on the second day from the small, pale instructor, a retired criminal psychologist, stuck in her head: “The crime is not over until the perpetrator stops deriving pleasure from the murder.” He called this personality subtype Anger Retaliatory, or AR, for short.

As soon as his session ended, Lauren had cornered the owlish little man in the hallway. She launched into her experience with David Spencer and how he was acquitted and did he have any thoughts about the situation? Lauren wanted to know how he would type David Spencer.

Clearly amused, he cocked one eyebrow, offered his arm, and said, “Join me at the hotel bar for a drink and tell me more about your interesting young fellow.”

That was at four o’clock in the afternoon. Six hours later, they were still talking.

The psychologist, Dr. Stephen Durand, was a quirky man. He only drank Chardonnay, very good Chardonnay, and only if he witnessed the bottle being opened in front of him. Subsequently, he’d have the server leave the bottle so it was never out of his sight. Lauren was usually pretty good at guessing people’s ages, but with Dr. Durand it was difficult. He was surely over sixty, possibly close to eighty, but had such a mischievous way about him, it made him appear much younger. His thick glasses magnified his muddy hazel eyes, and his thinning, sandy brown hair was combed neatly to the side, making the owl comparison even more compelling.

“Your young man has mommy issues,” he told her, sipping the contents of bottle number four from his elegant crystal glass. That was another thing he had insisted on. Real crystal, no glass. It’s a good thing this hotel has a five-star restaurant attached to it, Lauren thought as the bartender sent one of the bar backs to fetch the glasses when they first sat down and ordered. It’s a good thing Dr. Durand drinks hundred-dollar bottles of wine. He had told Lauren he’d been in there the night before, so the bartender didn’t act put off. Dr. Durand must also be a very good tipper.

“His mother was a basketcase the entire time. Not that I blame her. I’d be the same way if my eighteen-year-old son was on trial for murder.” Lauren took a small sip, only enough to stay sharp. Dr. Durand was drinking the vast majority of the wine, and even though he was a wisp of a man, it showed no effect on him.

“Ahhh, but you see, he does blame her. He blames the mother for everything bad that’s happened to him, in one way or another. He can’t kill mommy, so he finds a suitable substitute. Maybe his girlfriend laughed at him in bed. Maybe the rich woman turned him down when, in his mind, he thought she was making advances toward him. The fact is, it was a release for him to kill those women and he doesn’t feel bad about it. Not at all.” He paused for effect. “Quite the contrary. He believes those women deserved it.”

Lauren turned that over in her mind for a moment, watching the odd reflection of the two of them in the mirror behind the bar. Her tall, blond, and serious; and him short, bookish, and academic-looking. A mismatched couple if there ever was one. She ran a finger around the rim of the wineglass. “Will he kill again?”

Dr. Durand reclined a little in his high-backed bar chair. “Probably. And I would guess sooner rather than later. His high from killing and getting away with it will only last so long. Then he’ll have to find another suitable target, either consciously or subconsciously.”

“When he stops deriving pleasure from the other murders,” she said, reiterating his classroom statement back to him, “he’ll have to kill again.”

He pushed his wire rim glasses up his nose with a sly smile. “Precisely.”

They went over the other subtypes: Power Reassurance, Anger Retaliatory, Anger Excitation. It was a lot to learn, and a four-day seminar was not going to be enough time. “I’m just the messenger,” Dr. Durand admitted as they polished off the last bottle of wine. “If you want an in-depth study, I’d read the Keppel/Walter paper on the subject. It really is fascinating stuff.”

Fascinating and useful, especially for re-examining old crime scenes. Lauren looked up the journal where Dr. Durand had told her the article could be found and she’d ordered a copy online the very next day.

She and Dr. Durand developed an odd mentorship-like relationship over the next few days and evenings that extended to emails and phone calls for a few months after the seminar had ended. His validation of her suspicions didn’t bring David Spencer any closer to facing justice for what he had done, but she’d become a believer in the offender classification system. Eventually the emails had died off but she had saved every single one in a special folder, in case she ever needed to refer to them, along with all of her notes.

The idea of criminal personality subtypes had fueled her fixation on David Spencer for a while, but like the friendship with Dr. Durand it, too, faded over time as David stayed out of trouble and cold cases stacked up, waiting to be solved. David Spencer was still on her radar when the Murder Book got stolen, but much further back in her brain, in a mental holding pattern. All it would take would be one thing to pull him back into the forefront of her attention.

Like bringing flowers to the hospital.

Absently, she tapped the space bar on her computer with her index finger, sending the curser across the page: click, click, click.

She had so much else to be worrying about, like this impending caper with Reese and Charlie.

Click, click, click.

A mother was out there with no answers to her son’s murder. Who thought the detective coming to her door was on her side, fighting on her behalf. It’d all been a cruel, sick farce. Gabriel Mohamed and his mother deserved better. Lauren had to do better for them.

Snapping her laptop shut, she startled a snoozing Watson lying at her feet, who had passed out on top of what was left of the slipper. Lauren told the blinking dog, “I’m not going to get anything done tonight.”

Standing up and stretching, she looked at a picture of herself with her daughters again. A tightness wound around her throat, that yearning feeling that came with the realization that her girls had flown out of her nest and probably weren’t coming back. But also from the urge to protect them from people like David Spencer and the Schultzes: predators who could look like angels.

Maybe I am nuts, she told herself as she started up the basement steps, Watson at her heels. Maybe I’m the crazy one in this situation and I should have Reese lock me up for my own good. I can’t think about David Spencer now. I have to concentrate on Sam Schultz.

Watson ambled over to his food dish to lap up any remaining morsels he might have missed earlier. The night light in the hood over the stove cast the kitchen in a yellowish tint. Three rooms over, Reese’s thundering snores penetrated the walls.

Come tomorrow night, Lauren thought, bending over to scratch Watson’s ears as he moved over to slurp from his water dish, if we go through with this, me and Reese will both be certifiable.